MKs: Add Hareidi, Yesha Resident to Panel

In a letter, National Union MKs urged Professor Manuel Trachtenberg, who is heading a government committee charged with developing recommendations to ease the cost of living for middle class Israelis, to include a member of the Hareidi community and a resident of Judea and Samaria on the panel of citizens he has assembled for input on the the issue. The letter, signed by MKs Ya'akov Katz, Uri Ariel, Aryeh Eldad, and Michael Ben-Ari, stresses that including representatives of those communities would be proper, as Trachtenberg included an Arab woman on the panel in order to get the input of the Arab community on its economic problems.

The Hareidi and Yesha communities suffer the most from the housing crisis, the letter says, and the situation is made worse by the government's de facto building freeze in Judea and Samaria. “These problems will be addressed only if representatives of these communities will have the opportunity to express themselves,” the letter added.